I downloaded the provisional PDF and was initially tipped off by the curious citation style and copious use of footnotes, unlike the standard reference list seen in journal articles (e.g., APA format). I looked for a mention of the published book but could not find it anywhere. Perhaps this will be corrected in later editions of the article (if any).

The book is copyrighted (see below), but the nearly identical article is covered by a Creative Commons agreement, which states that the open-access text can be freely cited with attribution.

The notion that addiction is a ''brain disease'' has become widespread and rarely challenged.The brain disease model implies erroneously that the brain is necessarily the most important and useful level of analysis for understanding and treating addiction. This paper will explain the limits of over-medicalizing -- while acknowledging a legitimate place for medication in the therapeutic repertoire -- and why a broader perspective on the problems of the addicted person is essential to understanding addiction and to providing optimal care. In short, the brain disease model obscures the dimension of choice in addiction, the capacity to respond to incentives, and also the essential fact people use drugs for reasons (as consistent with a self-medication hypothesis). The latter becomes obvious when patients become abstinent yet still struggle to assume rewarding lives in the realm of work and relationships. Thankfully, addicts can choose to recover and are not helpless victims of their own ''hijacked brains.''

This is such an egregious violation that I suspect it must be some sort of a mistake. I've had my differences of opinion with the book's authors,1 but I don't want to be seen as harboring animus to discredit them.2 Which is why I'm not repeatedly calling them out by name in the post (though it's obvious who they are). I do feel somewhat bad about the whole situation, and will post an addendum to clear up any misunderstandings, or any subterfuge by an unknown third party. I've contacted the journal editor, and will keep you posted.

Footnotes

1I do agree with some parts of the book's agenda (and in fact the authors include Mind Hacks, Neuroskeptic, and The Neurocritic in their Acknowledgments -- which is good, since many of their examples are from our blogs). But I disagree in particular with their idea that shaming addicts is helpful (and also with their stance on property dualism). See these posts:

10 Comments:

Self-plagiarism is the word for this. Nevertheless it seems that "recycling" of research articles as book chapters is pretty common in the academic landscape. The incentive is clear: Why reduce your output when reusing & recycling is better for your CV?

I think "recycling" and self-plagiarism have become much more difficult these days, since it's so easy to check. In this case, Basic Books won't be happy their copyrighted material has been recycled in an open access journal. But I'm willing to set the record straight if there's another explanation...

Hi All…this is the authors of the Frontiers article (Sally Satel and Scott Lilienfeld) responding to the Neurocritic blog post. We’re more than happy to clear up the confusion. Neurocritic is quite right that the Frontiers article should have included an explicit mention that it was drawn primarily (with a few additions) from the addiction chapter in our recent book Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience.

A tad bit of “history” regarding this article is in order. Several months ago, Frontiers approached Sally Satel (not the other way around), to solicit an article submission. She offered the text of a chapter on addiction from Brainwashed, to be published later in the Spring, and explicitly informed the Frontiers editor that the text would first be appearing our book. The Frontiers editor and the peer reviewers were fully aware of the paper’s status as a slightly modified chapter in the book.

When excerpts of our book have appeared in print, as in Bloomberg News (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-02/brain-science-not-ready-to-replace-mad-men.html) and the most recent issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine (apparently not yet available online), they have been accompanied by an explicit acknowledgement that the article was adapted (or drawn directly) from our Brainwashed book. In the case of the Frontiers article, we erroneously assumed that such an acknowledgement was included, but it was not. We (and/or Frontiers) will be certain to correct this omission ASAP.

In the future, if similar (or other) questions arise regarding our Brainwashed book, please feel free to contact the authors directly at slsatel@gmail or slilien@emory.edu.

Yep, we hope to take care of this along the lines you've suggested (waiting to hear back from Frontiers in terms of how they wish to acknowledge the excerpt). Basic has granted us approval to reprint the chapter in slightly adapted form. All the best...Scott

It was misleading that the authors didn't include the Acknowledgments when it was submitted, rather than "assuming" that an editor would take care of it. Although they may have had permission from Basic Books it would have been professional to credit them for initial publication of the work, and the fact this was presented as an "original research" article is simply wrong.

I'm glad the Neurocritic caught this and look forward to seeing a corrected manuscript online ASAP.

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About Me

Born in West Virginia in 1980, The Neurocritic embarked upon a roadtrip across America at the age of thirteen with his mother. She abandoned him when they reached San Francisco and The Neurocritic descended into a spiral of drug abuse and prostitution. At fifteen, The Neurocritic's psychiatrist encouraged him to start writing as a form of therapy.